1.29.2010

What then should be the path of the church in our time? ... The basic theological issue is not between right and left ... not between the sacramental and the prophetic emphasis ... but between those for whom the church is a reality and those for whom it is the institutional reaction of the good and bad conscience ... of the religion of society. - John Yoder

1.25.2010

There's no better topic to start off this blog with than the Bible, and no better person than Karl Barth, an extremely influential, evangelical, early 20th century theologian. This is my very condensed (he goes for over 100 pages) version of what he says about the Bible in Church Dogmatics.

The Bible uses human words and therefore is each book contains the point of view of the author. This has to be the case because that is all human words are able to express. This seems to be what Barth means by 'fallible human words' (see my very last point in this blog). The Bible, according to Barth, is not written from God's perspective, it is not all telling, it is written from a very human perspective. That human perspective is recalling history.

I want to try something new with my blogging. The inspiration came from a Systematic Theology class. Theology is meant to be for the church (i.e. not just theologians) and yet theologians really only write to themselves or at least, write in such a way that only they would be the ones interested in reading it.

So my attempt in this blog will be to write about theology, simply. No matter how complicated the theologians describe it, I want to explain it here in a straight-forward, simple manner that is not dumbing-down what is really being said.

I have two motivations for this exercise: First, I also believe that theology is meant for the church but I also think the barrier to most is how theologians present it. Secondly, it'll be a good exercise to do to get a lot what I have been learning straight in my head.

I hope to blog about other things as well because Breaking Bad and the final season of Lost are starting soon. But we'll get there when we get there.